Ocean change around Greenland under a warming climate

The impact of climate warming on the ocean near Greenland is
investigated with a high resolution coupled global climate model. In
response to a four times increase of atmospheric CO2 levels, the ocean
around Greenland exhibits a strong warming, intensified in the
intermediate layer and regionally maximum in the Greenland Sea. The
projected changes in temperature are driven by changes affecting the
large scale ocean circulation rather than changes of the local
atmospheric heat forcing. The ocean conditions examined here provide a
background for the water masses in contact with the outlet glaciers
around the Greenland coast. The future warming of the subsurface layer
could thus lead to enhanced ice sheet melting, although the signal
could be mitigated by other effects, including the freshening of the
surface layer and the resulting enhanced stratification. Applying a
parameterization to estimate the change in melting rate along the
Greenland coast, we find that ice sheet melting increases everywhere
in response to the change in water mass properties, although the
melting rate changes show large variations in space. The largest
melting acceleration is found between Fram Strait and Denmark Strait,
where only moderate melting has been observed up to now, suggesting
that the Greenland Ice Sheet mass balance should be monitored
everywhere and not only where melting occurs at the moment.